Iain Martin is a political commentator, and a former editor of The Scotsman and former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the men who blew up the British economy, published by Simon & Schuster.. As well as this blog, he writes a column for The Sunday Telegraph. You can read more about Iain by visiting his website

Who wants to live in Len McCluskey's Britain?

Ever anxious to calm the situation, the ameliorative leader of the trade union Unite has just made a conciliatory speech in which he said that after listening all weekend to George Harrison and Ravi Shankar albums he had decided to fix on the goal of international peace and brotherly love. Donning a kaftan, Len McCluskey said that while there had been some negative energy flowing between the Labour leadership and Unite of late, over candidate selection and Ed Miliband's attempts to lead his own party, he (Len) was from now on going to approaching things in a newly transcendental and positive frame of mind.

No, OK, Len McCluskey didn't do any of that. Actually he unleashed a bizarre rant via a webcast to Union members in which he laid down the law to the Labour leader and castigated the party over the way in which it has handled the investigation into allegations of a fandango in Falkirk. McCluskey likes to range far and wide, sneering at the rich (which doesn't cover very well-paid trade union leaders it seems) and beating up on Tony Blair, a Labour leader who had the temerity to win three general elections.

McCluskey said today that he supports Ed Miliband's proposed reforms on party funding, which could mean an end to the political levy as currently constituted, but only it seems fair to assume because the new arrangements might give him and other unions extra power over policy and candidate selection. In this way Miliband's attempt to diminish the power of the trade unions is going to be used by unions bosses to secure more power. What a mess.

But the overwhelming feeling his rants induce in this observer is mild depression leavened with the thought that the Unite agenda is unlikely to be very popular in most of the country. Who wants to live in a country run by Len McCluskey or according to his doctrines? What a narrow, divisive, bleak and outmoded approach he embodies.

For all the tedious screeching about "werkin' peeeple" one gets the impression that the only "werkin' people" of which Len approves are those people working in jobs where they can be members of Unite or of the other large unions. The rest of us are bourgeois lackeys and capitalist running dogs, no matter how hard any of us work. Dare to get on or become modestly affluent in any way other than becoming a trade union leader and you are "rich". And being "rich" obviously involves leaching off, you guessed it, the "werkin' people".

I don't envy Ed Miliband having to deal with McCluskey and his colleagues at Unite, but it does present an opportunity. The Labour leader may comfort himself that hardly anyone is paying attention to such subjects, what with the weather and the Royal Baby, but over time this McCluskey drivel seeps into the public consciousness. Here is a big shouty man, shouting on the television, sneering about Labour's procedures and making angry demands of a younger man (David Something, or is that the other brother?) who says he want to be Prime Minister but hasn't convinced you yet and you suspect he never will.

Miliband desperately needs to project some positivity and find ways of suggesting that he has some mildly uplifting ideas about the country. Defining himself very robustly as the antithesis of Len McCluskey is a good start.